Miles on the MBTA, who usually tries to find the good in even the dowdiest T stop, finds absolutely nothing worthwhile about pitiful Hastings, a tiny little stop on the Fitchburg Line in Weston, right down to the Sharpie-drawn station sign on a plank of wood:

They...they even drew a little sign around "Hastings" and gave the MBTA website and everything! So...this is the signage. THIS IS THE ONLY INDICATION THAT PEOPLE ARE WAITING AT THE HASTINGS COMMUTER RAIL STATION ON THE FITCHBURG LINE IN WESTON, MASSACHURSETSTES! HASTINGS? MORE LIKE HATE-STINGS, BECAUSE THIS STATION IS THE WORST!

Members of The Boston Carmen's Union, local 589, set up a picket line outside the T money room in Charlestown today to protest the T's impending decision to hand over money handling to Brink's. Read more.

When obnoxious delinquent hooligans bellow their way on to the Green Line at Babcock Street after school (not to point a finger at the Match Charter Public School, but yeah), are the drivers allowed to tell them to STFU? Can T cops or real cops be summoned? Do intimidated senior citizens and full-fare-paying commuters have any recourse other than jamming into the front of the car and ceding the rear to the brats ? Sadly, this is not a hypothetical question.

Some trash burst into flames shortly after 2 p.m. on the inbound tracks just past State Street station sending light smoke towards Downtown Crossing and forcing the shutdown of service not long after.

An MBTA inspector put the fire out with an extinguisher, but Boston firefighters then had to walk down the tracks to figure out what caused the fire. Once they determined it was trash, not a cable, they left the tracks and let the T resume service, around 2:35 p.m.

The Portland Press-Herald reports a Maine state agency trying to make some extra money by refurbishing vehicles seriously underbid a contract to refurbish 32 MBTA articulated buses (the extra long kind you see on the Silver Line) - to the point where Maine might have to absorb the losses if it can't convince the T to pay more for the work. The Press-Herald notes: "Itâ€™s not clear what incentive the Boston-area transit authority would have to pay more for the work."

Somebody got his hand stuck in a Red Line door at Central, somebody else pulled the emergency cord and, boom, instant delays that led to people piling up at stations up and down the line as T workers set about opening the door and re-setting the brake, or whatever it is they do after somebody pulls that cord. At least we know it works.

At least one train has already been cancelled as police investigate the 12:30 p.m. incident, but the T is bracing passengers to expect "significant delays." Mansfield Police report the person is dead - on a stretch of tracks where Amtrak trains travel at well over 100 m.p.h.

The Boston Business Journal reports T officials are musing aloud about how wonderful it would be if they could replace all the cars on the Red Line with new cars with better brakes, which would let them run trains more often. No cost estimates yet, and, of course, we won't even start seeing the new cars already on order until 2019, if everything goes according to schedule.